Month: May 2005

Very cool concept. A typgraphic book search (using Amazon of course), showing the top 10 words over a 7 day period (covers all media, author in books, artist in music, actor in video/DVD, director in video/DVD). Once your zeitgeist is finished click on the mini images to zoom in for more detail. Gotta go see it for yourself.

Spicey kept this quiet or maybe he didn’t and I just didn’t notice. He’s one of the contributors of Digital Dish, a compilation of writing from 24 different food blogs. What a great idea! Congrats Spicey. I reckon us crafters should get off our asses and do something like this (Spicey’s offered to write, now who’s going to edit?). Published by Press for Change Publishing, be interesting to see what other books they have in the works.

Well not quite. But taking Alison’s lead, here’s some links. There is craft happening here at Craftapalooza, though I’m a litle distracted by our impending moving house in mid June. (Picture me doing small jig at excitement of nicer house with dishwasher.)

Reading Wallpaper recently I discovered Illustration. Click on the felt link. Very cool felt flokati rugs made from felt in pasta shapes and named the same.

A friend of mine (hey Gillian) has recently mentioned ethical shopping, her question to me was "is your shampoo and conditioner tested on animals"? I think I surprised her by knowing that it’s not tested on animals and that it’s also produced in Australia. I also buy unbleached toilet paper made from recycled products. They’re small gestures, but gestures nonetheless. Do you guys think about this stuff when shopping?

There HAS been knitting here at Craftapalooza. The past few weeks have been taken up by knitting this little fella (a commissioned knit). He’s a Debbie Bliss bear. I’m no fan of Debbie’s patterns. No schematics, minimal instructions. I’m knitting Rosy, another Debbie Bliss pattern, have been for a while, and there are no schematics for this either. It’s not an overly difficult pattern however, the finishing instructions are ridiculously minimal. Alison M has finished Rosy and had a hell of a time sewing it together. She emailed Debbie and did get one response, however it needed further clarification and she responded to Debbie and to date has had no answer. A little rude. Anyhow. Enough Debbie bashing.

Even though this bear wasn’t hard to knit he had an amazing amount of pieces (the Gromit was more frustrating). His head is 5 knitted pieces. He has soles for both his suit and his legs that were sewn into the legs. The suit wasn’t too bad to knit, wool cotton is a lovely yarn, but it splits like buggary and when you’re knitting toy garments that are on smaller than guage needles, ouch!

This post wasn’t meant to be a winge. Overall the bear’s come up quite good and hopefully the customer will love him.

I posted last week about a cushion design that could be suited to a pincushion. I’ve done a tutorial of sorts. It’s not in my genes to be specific about things, so writing a tutorial is not something that I get joy out of (I know, you’d think this would work against me when sewing, knitting and generally crafting, I rely on my intuition and it hasn’t let me down yet, however I’m open to projects not being perfect, so if you’re a perfectionist I could be your worse nightmare!).

This tutorial is done in the spirit that it would be nice to share and that some of you crafty’s might like to give it a go. As cushions go this is probably my favourite shape and style. It allows itself to various permutations. So here goes…if I’ve written something in shorthand, let me know, it’s a habit.

1. Cut out 2 squares. I cut out 4 inch x 4 inch squares for this pin cushie (I’ve used a woven woolen fabric, you could use whatever you wish, however fabric with a some stretch makes sewing a little easier). Mark the centre point on each edge.

2. Then pin one piece to the other at each middle point (at the points you marked in the first step). This is a little tricky, you’re pinning the point of one square to the middle of the other piece. I find if I pin only a small amount of fabric it is easier.

3. Pin the remaining four sides and sew, leaving one edge open. I would recommend sewing just past the corners on the last edge so that you get a nice corner. Stuff with your choice of filling, for the pincushie I used polyfill, however for the full size cushion I used a foam and feather mix.

4. Slip stitch the open edge closed. You could just leave it there, but I like to place a button in each centre and pull it tight to create an indent. Finished! One mini cushion or pincushie. I whipped this one up in less than an hour.

No picture of me sewing. You figure it out :), feel free to email me any questions or leave a comment telling me off! I think the side view helps make it a little clearer?? If you’d like to see larger images go to the flickr set here.

Spicey’s started up a self activating meme on cookbooks…if you dare! There’s the obligatory flickr pool. Get swimmin’.

1. Rationale behind what we’re seeing? After photographing my cookbooks and looking at the images I was thinking that it doesn’t look that interesting. There’s a mixture of my books and my partners (Doughman!). Doughman’s books cover bread, eating healthy, Rosemary Stanton and Ian Palmerton (he’s converted me to Rosemary). My stuff tends to be the flashy "look at me" type of cooking 😛 (Clarification, very simple food that is tasty on its own merits without a whole lot of excessive chef effort.) Early Jamie Oliver, Donna Hay (books and magazine), Stephanie Alexander, Maggie Beer, with a few vintage baking books thrown in.

3. Cookbook that made you what you were? Hmm. Tricky. If I’m honest and a little embarrassed to admit, late 1980’s Vogue Entertaining magazine with a little Women’s Weekly thrown in for the basics.

4. Porniest cookbook? Hmm. Lorenzo’s Antipasta, beautifully styled (gorgeous photography) and lots of simple small food that is delicious…followed second by Christine Manfield’s Paramount cookbook (a book I bought for the styling, photography and diecutting, more so than the food, I find the food over the top and too many hard-to-find ingredients).

5. Sophie’s Choice cookbook? Probably Stephanie Alexander’s Cook’s Companion (I have the first and second edition, the second edition I don’t use, the first is well loved).

I had played several MINOR (well minor in my mind) pranks on a fairly new employee at work (we’re a small office, so it’s intimate whether you like it or not!). Things like waiting for her to come out of the toilet and leaping out at her cat style whilst making some stupid noise, pretending something’s happened that hasn’t or that a client’s done something and they haven’t and driving her nuts (not for long, just long enough to see that look of terror on her face)! 🙂

She’s been a great sport, so far….that is until I got to work one morning this week. She’d been saying that she owed me 4 get-backs. Thank goodness there was a note on this one saying it was for all four. So now we’re even. For the moment….whhooooarhhrrrrrr